The terabyte era arrives, with Hitachi's 5-platter, 10-head 7K1000 hard drive. ExtremeTech puts Hitachi's latest hard drive on the bench and let you know how it performs. For an impressive $399 ($0.39/gig), is it worth your bucks?

Hitachi is the first to market with a 1TB hard drive, using the company's perpendicular recording technology. The technology is similar to Seagate's 750GB 7200.10. Perpendicular recording orients the tiny magnetic domains vertically, with one orientation representing binary zeros and the opposite representing binary 1's. Even so, Hitachi needs five platters and ten heads to hit 1TB. Having that many heads can have an impact on issues like noise and power draw. For example, the 750GB version of the drive is rated at 30dB while seeking; the 1TB sibling generates 32dB.

We're pretty impressed with the overall performance of the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000. However, as we pack more data onto these compact digital devices, the thought of losing that data is a bit daunting. Losing 160GB of data is one thing, but losing 900GB of your digital life is quite another. If you do opt for one of these massive drives, a good backup strategy is essential. If you're concerned about reliability, two drives set up in a RAID 1 configuration may give you a little peace of mind, but RAID 1 is no substitute for a good backup.

The price for the 7K1000 is impressive: $399 (MSRP) for a one terabyte drive. That price is pretty close to what we've seen on the web, with some web shops selling as low as $389, while others are charging as much as $599. As supply increases, pricing will likely shake out.

Another review can be found on AnandTech:

Overall, we think Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 is the best 7200rpm drive we have tested to date. This is quite the accomplishment considering this is Hitachi's first 3.5-inch form factor drive that utilizes perpendicular recording technology. We still have significant testing left to complete on this drive that includes our full IPEAK and Application test suite with AAM and NCQ turned off or on along with RAID testing but we do not expect to find any surprises at this time. With an expected retail price of $399 or $0.40 per-Gigabyte this makes the 7K1000 a true value considering its size and performance. For these reasons, we highly recommend the purchase of this drive if you are currently looking for a high-capacity drive with performance to match.

The digital age is going to require massive amounts of hard drive space. A good investment, I'd say :-)